Name: Elbert Jolio

NIM: 2017130107

Illocutions in Discourse
Searle admits that certain rules must be followed in order successfully to pursue various
types of conversation. A basic principle of the conduct of discourse is that every speech act,
performed at a certain time in a dialogue, limits in general the set of possible illocutionary acts
which are appropriate replies in that dialogue to this act, However, Searle points out that even
when there are systematic relations between a speech act and its possible replies, as is the case
between questions and their answers, the discursive constraints are much less strong than one
would expect. Thus the form of possible appropriate answers to questions may not correspond to
the structure of their propositional content. Moreover, a speaker may often change the subject of
a conversation or even perform an inappropriate speech act which has nothing to do with what
has been said before without eo ipsoviolating a constitutive rule of the conversation which can
continue successfully. Thus, the obvious irrelevance, failure, defectiveness or unsatisfaction of
particular illocutionary acts at certain moments of time in a conversation do not necessarily
interrupt that conversation or prevent it from being successful.

Second, unlike illocutionary acts which are always provided with a point internal to their
force, conversations according to Searle do not have a point or purpose which is internal to them
qua conversations. For this reason, the analysis that Grice, Sperber and Wilson and others have
made of the maxim of relevance could hardly lead to a theory of conversation. The relevance of
an illocutionary act at a moment of utterance is essentially dependent on the specific purposes of
the participants in the conversation at that moment. Now such purposes can change arbitrarily in
the course of a conversation. In making an utterance at a certain moment a speaker may have a
new purpose which is quite different from the previously existing purpose of the conversation.
Consequently, Grice's requirement of relevance imposes relatively few constraints on the proper
structure of a large number of conversations.

Thirdly, as Wittgenstein already pointed out, to converse is to engage in activities interwoven

with various social forms of life. One cannot dissociate the meanings and purposes of speakers in
a discourse from the background of their conversation which contains an open network of mental
states of speakerssuch as desires, intentions as well as beliefs directed at facts of the world as
well as a series of speakers' abilities and practices relating to their common forms of life or
coming from their biological constitution of human beings. According to both Wittgenstein and
Searle, it is impossible to make an exhaustive theoretical description of the structure of a
conversational background. Such attempts of description could never stop and would lead us to a
regression ad infinitum.

Finally, conversations are by nature joint actions of several agents who in turn make their
successive utterances with the intention of achieving common goals. As Searle points out, the
intentionality common to the protagonists of a conversation is a collective intentionality that is
not reducible to the sum of their individual intentions in the first person and to their mutual
knowledge of the conversational background. Of course, all the speakers and hearers of a
conversation are endowed with a series of personal individual mental states which they
sometimes express verbally in speaking. However, when two speakers participate to a
conversation, they both perform a joint linguistic activity and not two distinct individual
activities. Some of their individual intentions may differ. Thus, in a theoretical discussion, one
speaker can argue for and the other speaker against a certain thesis in question. However, such
different individual intentions are part of the same, higher order, shared collective intention of
describing together how objects are in the world.

As Searle recognizes, the preceding considerations about discourse are not really a
demonstration of the impossibility of enriching speech act theory to develop an adequate theory
of conversation. They only show intrinsic difficulties of a theoretical investigation of the subject.
Background and collective intentionality are also indispensable in the current semantics and
pragmatics of speech acts. However Searle does not question these established theories. Thus
one can still hope to succeed in meeting Searle's challenge with regard to the possibility of
elaborating a theory of conversation.

According to Searle, the propositional content of most illocutionary acts only determines
truth conditions on the basis of a series of assumptions and practices which belong to the
background. Consider, for example, the request expressed by saying "Please, cut the grass !" Its
conditions of satisfaction are dependent on the forms of life underlying the conversation of the
speaker and hearer. If the speaker's purpose is esthetical (he wants the lawn at home to be mowed
just like his neighbors to make it more beautiful), the hearer would do better to cut the grass
using a lawn mower. But if the shared form of life underlying the conversation is different (the
speaker's purpose is to sell the lawn to neighbours who have lost their own because of drought),
the hearer should transplant the lawn in order to grant the speaker's request. The very analysis of
the fundamental notions of truth and satisfaction of speech act theory requires then a reference to
the background. In order to analyze in pragmatics the meaning of non literal utterances,
background is moreover indispensable at a later stage. Each interpreter must recognize facts of
the background which prevent the speaker from speaking literally if he respects the
conversational maxims. Of course, a proper theory of conversation requires a richer description
of background than the theory of isolated illocutionary acts. For example, the theory of
conversation must account for the changes that new speech acts can provoke in the assumptions
that are made about the conversational background by participants. However, to require a richer
description of background in the theory of conversation is not to introduce a new theoretical limit
that cannot be overrun.

By nature, an instance of a well formed discourse is a finite sequence of successive

utterances made by agents who are in turn speakers and hearers. As Frege pointed out, sentences
are the syntactic units of conversation. Speakers cannot make acts of reference to an object
without subsuming it under a concept and making a predication. Moreover they cannot express a
prepositional content without relating it to the world with a certain illocutionary force. So the
analysis of basic illocutionary acts such as assertions, promises, requests, appellations and thanks
that speakers attempt to perform by their use of sentences is part of the logic of discourse.
However, speakers seldom talk just for the purpose of in turn performing such illocutionary acts.
As Wittgenstein pointed out, speakers in conversation are engaged in common forms of
life where they collectively attempt to achieve goals. Their speech acts are most often related to
non verbal actions in a social activity such as training, going out shopping, cleaning the house,
preparing a dinner, making or repairing a machine. In exchanging words, speakers often
play language games which are not purely discursive. Their main common purpose is then extra-
linguistic. Agents communicate in order to coordinate intelligently their non verbal actions. I
agree with Wittgenstein and Searle that it is impossible to construct a theory of all kinds of
language games. There are countless kinds of social forms of life and objectives that we could
share. So there are "countless kinds" of language games that we could play in exchanging words
and sentences. "And this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of
language, new languagegames, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete
and get forgotten"(Philosophical Investigations 23)

The proper task of the logic of discourse is more restricted : it is rather to analyze only the
structure of conversations whose type is provided with an internal discursive purpose. As I have
pointed out ( [9]), there are only four possible discursive goalsthat speakers can attempt to
achieve by way of conversing : the descriptive, deliberative, declaratoryand expressive
goals which correspond each to one of the four possible directions of fit between words and
things.

 Discourses with the words-to-things direction of fit have the descriptive goal : they
serve to describe what is happening in the world. Such are descriptions, reports, accounts,
stories, tales, memoirs, confessions, balances, public statements, comments, diagnoses,
forecasts, prophesies, debates on a question, arguments, explications, demonstrations,
theories, interviews and lessons, interrogations, corrections, examinations and evaluations at
school.

 Discourses with the things-to-words direction of fit have the deliberative goal : they
serve to deliberate on which future actions speakers and hearers should commit themselves
to in the world. Such are deliberations, negotiations, bargaining sessions, peace talks,
discussions aiming at a friendly settlement, a compromise or the signing of a contract,
auctions, research programmes, collective planning, consultations, discourses of advertizing
and of electoral propaganda, sermons and exhortations.

 Discourses with the double direction of fit have the declaratory purpose : they serve
to transform the world by way of doing what one says. Such are official declarations like
declarations of war or of independence, ultimatums, amnesties, inaugural addresses,
testaments, juridical codes, constitutions, regulations, creations of new symbolic languages
and institutions, discourses held in ceremonies of baptism, pardon and wedding,
nominations, appointments, licences and judgements at court.
  Discourses with the empty direction of fit have the expressive point : they serve to
express common attitudes of their speakers. Such are the exchange of greetings, welcomes,
congratulations, eulogies, praises, discourses which pay homage, express contrition, verbal
protestations, public lamentations, cheers, boos and religious ceremonies where the
participants express their faith and obedience to God.

In my opinion, we are all able to pursue conversations with the four discursive purposes. For
we are all able to distinguish in thinking the four possible directions of fit from which we can
achieve a correspondence between language and the world. Such directions are innate. Why are
there exactly four discursive purposes while there are five illocutionary points ? According to
illocutionary logic, two different illocutionary points have the same things-to-words direction of
fit : the commissive point which consists in committing the speaker to a future action and
the directive pointwhich consists in making an attempt to get the hearer to act. Speaker and
hearer play very asymmetric roles in the contexts of single utterances : one is active and the other
passive. So language distinguishes naturally a speaker-based and a hearer-based illocutionary
point with the things-to-words direction of fit. In the case of commissive illocutionary acts, the
responsibility for changing the world lies on the speaker, in the case of directives, it lies on the
hearer. Of course, Searle's classification of illocutionary points would be more elegant if the
commissive and directive illocutionary points could be unified. But this is not possible. Real
commitments are personal. So no speaker can commit someone else to an action by his own
utterance. An attempt to get a hearer to act does not commit that hearer. Moreover a speaker who
commits himself to an action does not necessarily try to influence himself.

However, the speaker and hearer are in a very different speech situation when they are
protagonists of a conversation. For any hearer within a discourse is a potential speaker : he can in
principle speak in his turn and contribute to the conversation. So the protagonists of a
conversation play the two complementary roles of speaker and hearer. Thus any hearer who
is given a directive at a moment can reply and commit himself personally later. Often, the
commitment of a speaker is conditional upon a future commitment of the hearer who can accept,
refuse or make a counter-offer. For that reason, there is a one-to-one correspondence between the
discursive purposes and the possible directions of fit in the use of language. Discursive purposes
and illocutionary points are logically related by their direction of fit. In order to achieve a
discursive goal on a theme in a conversation, speakers must achieve illocutionary points with the
same direction of fit on propositions about the objects under consideration

Let us apply the logic of discourse to the analysis of replies to master speech acts in
conversations with a proper discursive goal. Inspired by Wittgenstein, Searle and I wrote : "The
key to understanding the structure of conversations is to see that each illocutionary act creates
the possibility of a finite and usually quite limited set of appropriate illocutionary acts as replies.
Sometimes the appropriate illocutionary act reply is very tightly constrained by the act that
precedes it, as in question and answer sequences; and sometimes it is more open, as in casual
conversations that move from one topic to another. But the principle remains that just as a move
in a game creates and restricts the range of appropriate countermoves so each illocutionary act in
a conversation creates and constrains the range of appropriate illocutionary responses."
Protagonists of a conversation can react non verbally to previous utterances in order to satisfy
them. When they make a reply, they react verbally in the conversation.

Replies are often important and sometimes decisive. They determine how to continue the
conversation. 1 agree with Searle that there are times in ordinary conversations where one speaks
of the weather and ask questions about the health of others only to enjoy the pleasure of speaking
to others. The collective intention of speakers is sometimes to speak and talk for talking's sake.
In that case, the requirement of relevance is rather an external constrain on speech acts coming
from general principles of practical reason. However, the logic of discourse, as I conceive it,
only treats of conversations provided with an internal discursive goal and its theory of success
require the performance of master speech acts standing in certain relations. So discursive
constrains turn out to be much stronger than Searle thinks. Relevance is an internal constrain on
conversations whose goal is internal to them qua conversations.

As we will see, the form of relevant replies to a master illocutionary act is quite determined by
the form of that illocutionary act given the discourse type of the conversation in course and its
background.

Here are some general remarks on the matter. For the sake of clarity, I will apply my analysis to
the following conversation that was held in a bookstore in Montreal :
(1) The potential buyer (hereafter B): "Good morning ! Are you a salesperson here ?" (2) The
potential salesman (hereafter S): "Yes" (3) B : "Do you have Hamlet ? (4) S : "The original
English book or a French translation ?" (5) B : "A French translation" (6) S : "Here it is." (7) B :
"Thank you !" (8) S : "It is a very good translation in a nice collection."(9) B : "How much does
it cost ?" (10) S : "Let me see ! 30$" (11) B : "That is very expensive." (12) S : "There is another
cheaper edition." (13) B : "Really ?" (14) S : "In this collection it costs less than 20$." (15) B :
"O.K. I want it" (16) S : "Unfortunately, I don't have it in stock. Do you want me to order it for
you ? I'll get it soon." (17) B : "Yes." (18) S : "Please, fill this order form !" (20) B : "Here it is !
Good bye !" (21) S : Thank you ! I'll phone you as soon as I get it. Goodbye !".

The preceding conversation was a successful negotiation of the purchase and sale of a book. The
two protagonists achieved the deliberative point in committing each other reciprocally to buying
and selling a book on order.

Which kinds of replies should a hearer make to a previous important utterance in a

conversation ?

Suppose that the hearer does not understand the sense or the reference of an expression, or does
not know the value to give to a free variable or how to disambiguate a sentence used in that
utterance. Then he should react in order to understand what the speaker has said. He should ask
the speaker to be more explicit. This explains utterance (4) in the preceding conversation.

Often speakers do not speak literally in a conversation. They are ironic, make metaphors, indirect
speech acts and conversational implicatures. The basic units of a conversation are the
illocutionary acts that speakers attempt to perform by their utterances, no matter whether they are
literal or not. As Searle and I pointed out, in order to get understood, the speaker who means
something else than what he says relies on various mental capacities and attitudes of the hearer :
first the hearer's knowledge of the meaning of the sentence used and his ability to identify the
literal illocutionary act, secondly their mutual knowledge of certain facts of the conversational
background and finally the hearer's ability to make inferences on the basis that the speaker
respects conversational maxims. Suppose that the hearer understands the literal illocutionary act.
But he does not know whether he should take into consideration a fact of the conversational
background that would oblige the speaker to speak non literally given the conversational
maxims. In that case the hearer should again ask the speaker to say what he means. For example,
the salesman could have wondered whether the buyer indirectly requested to see the book by
way of asking (3). So he could have asked him : "Do you want to see the book ?". But he thought
that it was really an indirect request. So he reacted non verbally by giving the book (6). By
saying "Thank you !" the buyer confirmed his non literal interpretation. If however he had
replied "No need to give me the book. I just wanted to know if you have it.", he would have
specified that he only wanted to ask the literal question. As Nancy cognitive psychologists
pointed out speakers can make a linguistic exchange in order to fix together the interpretation to
give to a previous utterance that is ambiguous or could be non literal. Their intervention then
clarifies the meaning of that utterance. Intercomprehension is often made by default as in (6) and
(7). In considering utterances within the conversations to which they belong, the logic of
discourse gives a new perspective to the theory of meaning. Meaning turns out to be finer and
less dependent upon the single point of view of the agent of the utterance.

Once the hearer has understood the attempted illocutionary act of a previous utterance, he should
still react when certain felicity conditions are not fulfilled in the conversational background. The
speaker could ignore the fact that aspects of the background are incompatible with the non
defective performance or satisfaction of his utterance. When the utterance is central, however,
the intelligent hearer should reply by saying that the speaker cannot perform the illocutionary act
in question, that its presuppositions are false, that he is insincere or that the attempted
illocutionary act is not entirely satisfied or satisfiable. Sometimes, the illocutionary act is
satisfiable but not immediately or only if the speech situation is changed. So the resulting
linguistic exchange can have important consequences. Speakers can be brought to change the
background or to revise their intentions. For example, after the buyer's indirect refusal (11) to
buy the first book, the bookseller replies by offering him (14) a cheaper one. When he sees that
he cannot keep his promise, he then proposes to the buyer that he order it for him (16).

In conversations interlocution is creative. Speakers have intelligently to coordinate their

utterances in order to achieve their discursive goals. They manifest a practical and theoretical
minimal rationality in their conversations. An important objective of the logic of discourse is to
analyze that interpersonal minimal rationality.
REFERENCE

https://www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-philosophie-2001-2-page-243.htm

http://www.queendjo.com/2019/02/illocutionary-force-indicating-devices.html
https://www.thoughtco.com/felicity-conditions-speech-1690855